The objective: to build credit card loyalty and spend among existing customers by tying with the Beijing Paralympics.

Sparks research found, that when it comes to giving to charitable causes, being able to choose not just where the money goes, but the individual beneficiary motivates donors.

Sparks analyzed data and found that to gain more “share of wallet,” you could increase physical share in the actual real wallet—that is, have more cards. But how to do this without creating another account and another loyalty program—something customers clearly don’t want?

Sparks designed a campaign to give an additional “athlete companion card” (same account number, same rewards) to existing cardholders in the run-up to the Beijing Paralympics.

A percentage of spend on the card was used to sponsor the selected national Paralympics athlete.

After sponsoring an athlete, the sponsor (cardholder) had access to an exclusive athlete’s site, blog, can register for e-mail, tweets, SMS updates, and photos, with the opportunity for limited correspondence

Card carriers had handwritten salutations, signatures and P.S. from the athlete

The card art was intentionally cropped so that the person is “enabled” in the photo

In Their Shoes competition

Cardmembers also had an opportunity for a chance to win “In Their Shoes”-- a training session with their sponsored Paralympics athlete.